Control system for the 2nd generation Berkeley automounters (BAM2) at GM/CA-CAT macromolecular crystallography beamlines

GM/CA-CAT at Sector 23 of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) is an NIH funded facility for crystallographic structure determination of biological macromolecules by X-ray diffraction. nd-generation Berkeley automounter is being integrated into the beamline control system at the 23BM experimental station. This new device replaces the previous all-pneumatic gripper motions with a combination of pneumatics and XYZ motorized linear stages. The latter adds a higher degree of flexibility to the robot including auto-alignment capability, accommodation of a larger capacity sample Dewar of arbitrary shape, and support for advanced operations such as crystal washing, while preserving the overall simplicity and efficiency of the Berkeley automounter design.